


just the light on my face

by luninosity



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Breakfast, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Emotions, M/M, Mornings, Porn with Feelings, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Sexual Content, Standard Winter Soldier Warnings, True Love, nothing explicit though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-09
Updated: 2015-01-09
Packaged: 2018-03-06 21:27:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3149099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luninosity/pseuds/luninosity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There’s never a time when they haven’t taken care: while kissing, while touching, while coming together. So much care with each other, for each other; never a time without that, or there never has been. Until, maybe, now. </p><p>Now there’s something new. It tastes like sunlight. Feels like Steve’s hand resting on Bucky’s skin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	just the light on my face

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hitlikehammers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hitlikehammers/gifts).



> Characters belong to Marvel, not me; only having fun! 
> 
> Title from The Breeders’ “We’re Gonna Rise,” which is SUCH a Steve/Bucky song, down to the line about _still the sun shines/ hits my shield and ignites…_
> 
> For hitlikehammers, who wrote rain for me, so I have written sunshine and breakfast foods and orgasms in return. *hearts*

There’s never a time when they haven’t taken care: while kissing, while touching, while coming together. So much care with each other, for each other; never a time without that, or there never has been. Until, maybe, now.   
  
Now there’s something new. It tastes like sunlight. Feels like Steve’s hand resting on Bucky’s skin.  
  
In the before-now, the first of their befores, they’re permanently careful. Bucky’s eager but tender, excited but reverent, touching Steve’s smaller body with utmost gentleness in their narrow shared bed in the apartment with the broken window and the heatless walls. Bucky looks at Steve with some kind of awe, like he can’t quite believe this is happening; looks at Steve with radiant devotion until Steve’s swearing and punching him weakly in the shoulder and sometimes even kicking him with just the right leverage, and demanding that he get the fuck _on_ with things, jerk, not gonna _break_ —  
  
Bucky laughs and the tension eases into more natural movements, back to being them and not this strange worship that makes Steve flush with uneasy prickling, with the knowledge that he doesn’t deserve it, not him, not a loudmouthed stubborn scrawny punk kid who’s somehow got a shining imperfect golden angel to kiss him, an angel who leaves muddy boots in the entryway and hauls Steve to scientific expositions in lieu of actual dates and tastes like peppermint plus the occasional guilty cigarette because he’s tryin’ real hard to give up smoking since Steve’s weak lungs and heart moved in—  
  
That’s the before. When Bucky mutters words about Steve being so damn demanding in bed, Christ, how’s a guy supposed to keep up; when Steve says “You love it” and Bucky shrugs and presses a too-soft kiss into Steve’s hipbone, no marks, and says, “Yeah.”  
  
That’s not the now.   
  
Now also isn’t hurried touches, fleeting stolen kisses, in base camps or on patrol. Now isn’t Steve sneaking into the infirmary after getting Bucky back alive the first time around, sneaking in to hold Bucky’s hand while Bucky sleeps, a hand-hold that’s the world. Now isn’t Steve getting a tent to himself because, hey, Captain America, and Bucky grinning at the Howling Commandos—who grin back and salute him—and promptly getting up to follow Steve through the tent-flap, leaving firelight and good-natured jokes behind.  
  
They’d been careful then too, only the other way around: Steve afraid to push, to ask too much, Steve puppy-clumsy with newfound strength and breadth and weight and breath in his lungs. Bucky quieter, quieter than ever before, no visible scars from that laboratory table but invisibly carried in his self-contained stillness. Bucky smiling at Steve with heartbreaking bravado, and Steve being, yes, careful. Because he had to be, because it’d been his turn, his chance to give that back. Except it hadn’t really ever been: Bucky’d smiled at him, yeah, just like that, and run exploratory fingertips over bared muscles, and Steve’d felt at home in this body, his body, at last. Bucky caring for him, Bucky always.  
  
That’s still not now.   
  
In the now, they’re careful again, at least the first kisses, the first few touches. In the now they’re shivering and broken souls rediscovering glory, locked out of paradise and the afterlife but given a second chance right here on earth.   
  
Now is Steve’s turn to be gentle, to touch or not touch, to wait while Bucky looks into the distance at some shape that isn’t either Steve or the corner of the bed they’re back to sharing. To learn how to not act, and that might be the hardest lesson of his whole damn life.  
  
He does it for Bucky.   
  
They’re living in Tony Stark’s absurdly grandiose tower because it’s the securest place in the world at the moment and because Tony’s loneliness aches like a wound, and Steve can never not want to bandage a wound, especially not on a teammate and friend. Bucky’d agreed, and Steve had nearly cried. The old Bucky would’ve agreed out of the same nursemaid-type impulses, protecting Stark the way he’d once protected Steve, the way he’d stepped in years ago to block a punch before it could land on a skinny asthmatic boy with martyrdom tendencies.  
  
The Bucky of today agrees because Steve says it’s the right thing to do.   
  
Steve wants to put a fist through the wall. No: Steve wants to put both fists through every monster who ever dismembered all that brightness and kindness. Who made Bucky need to turn to Steve for orders, for directions, for a sense of right and wrong.  
  
Bucky’s getting better. He does believe that. Not fewer nightmares, exactly, but a shift in content: mourning, grief, rage over loss. Processing. Bucky’s starting to make decisions, small ones: Thai or Mexican for dinner, a preference for boots outside or bare feet inside, soaking up the plush feel of the carpet through skin. He likes pumpkin spice, which Steve can’t stand, and actually goes so far as to ask Sam to teach him how to make cinnamon pancakes, which leads to the best day of Steve’s whole damn life, the day that Bucky nudges him out of sleep to discover a plate of pancakes and whipped cream being waved under his nose.  
  
Steve collects sparse notes like priceless breadcrumbs. They build a trail, though he doesn’t know to what, and he’s afraid there might be witches in those woods. Bucky likes cooking. Bucky likes watching Steve. Bucky likes being alone sometimes, but likes sleeping next to Steve, and tends to stay awake until Steve either drops off or fakes it successfully enough. Bucky doesn’t like asparagus or, for some inexplicable reason, bubble wrap. Bucky doesn’t seem to have an opinion about clothing, or not yet, and will wear Tony-Stark-themed sweatpants and t-shirts continuously unless handed something else. Bucky looks at the plates of his left arm in sunlight and shrugs when Steve asks whether it hurts. He says it’s a tool, a weapon. Steve hears the words differently: I’m a tool, I’m a weapon, I’m something they made.  
  
Steve’s accidentally put a couple of holes into their bathroom wall, at those answers. Bucky gives him an ironic sideways glance each time: I know that was you, Steven Grant Rogers.   
  
The third time this happens, Bucky kisses him.   
  
It’s quick and light, an eyeblink kiss, a feather of lips. Steve’s world quakes, rocked to the core. Bucky vanishes into the bedroom before Steve can take a breath.  
  
Steve puts his fingers to his lips. Bucky.  
  
No sound from the bedroom. He’s torn. Follow, make sure, try to help? Or—no. Learn and relearn how to do nothing, when nothing’s what’s needed from him. He exhales.  
  
The bedroom door opens and shuts. This is a message, letting him hear the sound.  
  
Bucky reappears, shaken and pale but oddly calm and a little surprised-looking. “Steve?”  
  
“Yeah?” He clears his throat. “Yeah, Buck?”  
  
“I wanted to do that,” Bucky says. “I didn’t know I could want to do that. Until now. But then I thought—you and Sam keep sayin’ I need to say yes or no. Consent. And I just kissed you. So…?”  
  
“Um,” Steve says gingerly, feet naked on the cool dark wood of the floor, “yeah? You did? I’m kinda not sure what you’re asking.”  
  
Bucky sighs. It’s a very human, very exasperated sigh. “I didn’t ask you. Sorry.”  
  
Steve literally feels his mouth fall open.  
  
Bucky glares—not a Winter Soldier glare, not a James Buchanan Barnes glare; someplace in between and discovered wholly new—and turns like he’s about to flee the scene a second time.  
  
“Yes!” Steve blurts out. Bucky stops.  
  
“Yes,” Steve says again, Steve vows, Steve begs. “Yes, you can, yes, I want—I get why you asked, I do, I swear I do, and that’s—that’s good, that’s so good, but, Buck, you don’t have to ask. Not about that, not with me, always yes, _always,_ okay?”  
  
“Oh.” Bucky puts that head on one side. Wayward strands of hair fall into his eyes; he shoves them back. “Can I do it again?”  
  
“Damn right you can,” Steve agrees, and Bucky comes to him and does.  
  
And it’s perfect, it truly is. Everything Steve could’ve never imagined getting—not just getting back, but _getting,_ because this is Bucky and isn’t, because Steve’s not the same person either, because the men they are now still forever fall into each other’s orbit like planets drawn to the sun.  
  
And so: Steve’s careful. Because this time, this miraculous second chance? This is _his_ chance. His turn to treat Bucky like Bucky’s the one made of spun-sugar and porcelain, not because Bucky’s breakable—though Bucky _is_ recovering, that much is ongoing and undeniable and colors their every move—but because Bucky’s worthy of care.  
  
Steve shouldn’t want more. Steve _doesn’t_ want more. Steve will swear up and down, and mean it, that he doesn’t want more.  
  
Steve wants more, God help him; he wants everything because he’s never been afraid to dive right in and come up swinging; he wants to make it all okay by sheer force of will—  
  
He can’t.   
  
He kisses Bucky before sleep in the midnight-velvet night, when Bucky tastes like toothpaste and heat, and he kisses Bucky in the morning under creamy sunlight in the kitchen, when Bucky tastes like terrible pumpkin coffee and hope. He closes his eyes and breathes Bucky in.  
  
And maybe he shouldn’t, maybe he shouldn’t take this even as it’s offered. But that’s Bucky asking, those’re Bucky’s eyes, that’s Bucky’s crooked affectionate sideways smile; and Steve’s not a good enough person to say no, not strong enough to say no, never has been, faced with Bucky’s eyes and heat and lip-lick of tongue. Steve tries to do the right thing, Steve always tries, but around Bucky his moral compass gets fucked east and west and north and south, and in the absence of Bucky his moral compass gets fucked east and west and north and south in a different way and he puts airplanes into arctic ice, and so really: he’s got no choice at all. Never has, at the merest mention of Bucky Barnes.  
  
He’s stronger these days and he still knows right from wrong, forever has, those’re points in his favor if anyone’s counting, but really, again: Bucky’s his hero. Bucky’s his right and wrong and all the points in between. True north on that compass needle.   
  
Not Captain America, nope, not for Steve’s definition of _hero_. Steve will say instead: the guy who got up off a torture-chamber slab and made sure _Steve_ could climb a shaking ladder as the base rumbled around them.   
  
The man who’d caught his hand this morning when Steve passed him a mug of coffee, who held that hand and breathed a kiss lightly over Steve’s skin and turned the moment from ordinary into spun gold. Who asked, who’s asking now, for more. Unafraid.  
  
The other half of Steve’s soul, who’d once said _no, Stevie, listen, you’re doin’ me a favor if you move in, rent’s easier with two, right?,_ and then held him without speaking later that week when he’d started sobbing because of the damn laundry and the scent of his shirt and the way he’d never quite learned his mother’s trick for folding sleeves.  
  
So: if Steve’s a hero, it’s because of Bucky Barnes, and Steve knows Bucky doesn’t know that, doesn’t think like that, but if Steve is a hero at all then Steve’s damn well going to be one now. For Bucky.  
  
Always for Bucky.  
  
And it is now, right now. And the moment’s frozen, poised and dangling over a precipice. Crystal hooked on words, ready to shatter.  
  
He’s holding that hand in his in the soundless sunshine. Bucky’s hair’s disheveled from sleep and the tag at the back of his t-shirt’s sticking up. Details. Important. Every single clear-edged diamond-brilliant one.  
  
Bucky’s hand is warm.   
  
Bucky runs that tongue over his lips again, pink on pink, wet and shining; but in the next second his eyes go from teasing grey-blue lakes, ice-skates and laughing rinks in winter, to the brink of open wounds. To blades cutting through the ice, not yet all the way but soon, and Steve knows that’s because he hasn’t answered, because Bucky’s _might want somethin’ after all, you did say I should ask if I wanted something, think this’s me wanting you_ is hanging fire in the air.  
  
He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to say—no big Captain America inspirational speeches for this one, no words—but he closes his fingers around Bucky’s human ones and then holds out the other hand too, open.  
  
Bucky looks at it. The ice creaks in surprise, but doesn’t snap clean through.  
  
Steve raises eyebrows— _you gonna leave me hanging?_ —and waits.  
  
Bucky lifts his other hand, sets it in Steve’s. Delicate like he thinks he might crush bone, like Steve’s an eggshell or glass. Sunshine prickles off the metal plates as they shift and stir. Steve doesn’t exactly think it’s beautiful, not when it’s nothing Bucky had a choice in, but Steve does think it’s beautiful because Bucky’s _here_.  
  
The metal’s warm too, kissed by the sun.  
  
They sit there tangling both hands across the breakfast table and the litter of syrup-speckled plates and butter-knives and half-drunk glasses of orange juice, awkward and soundless and stupid and holding on.  
  
Eventually something indefinable shifts or eases or breaks, Steve will never know what or why, but all at once there’s a twitch at the corner of Bucky’s mouth like he’s trying not to laugh, thaw behind the ice that’s abruptly full of amusement; so Steve with absolutely no forethought says “We gonna take this to the bedroom, or is it something about the orange juice, is that a turn-on, ’cause I’m okay with that, really, Buck, if you need the orange juice to watch, we can do that,” and puts on his best earnest gosh-wow Captain America expression.  
  
And Bucky starts laughing everywhere, whole body lit up and shaking with it, sunlight in his hair and at the creases of his eyes and in the tightness of his hands around Steve’s; maybe there’s a tinge of startlement to the laughter like he’s not expecting the sound, but neither of them comments on that, and maybe the Bucky-of-before would’ve retaliated with some smart-ass crack about keeping an eye on the sausages, but this is the Bucky who’s _here_ and he’s everything Steve’s ever needed.  
  
And suddenly in fact he’s even _more_ here, having launched himself across the table to land on Steve’s lap.  
  
The chair, not meant for two super-soldiers and unanticipated pouncing, splinters. Steve ends up on the floor with the Winter Soldier lying atop him and attempting to smother him in kisses, which is definitely not a bad way to go. Bucky alternates between being straightforward as hell about taking and having and accomplishing missions—hence the sudden pouncing and the earlier declaration of want—and a kind of shocked deferential hesitation whenever his thoughts catch up and the _oh fuck kissing Steve shouldn’t be I shouldn’t don’t deserve why would he let me what if I hurt Steve but Steve said if I want and I want but keep Steve safe forever forever and ever_ kicks in.  
  
Steve doesn’t let that voice get a word out. Wraps his arms and legs around Bucky and kisses back, drowning self-doubt in his own certainty. One of his feet takes out a table-leg along the way; the whole affair wobbles, plates and forks and glasses and all.  
  
Let it, he thinks. Let it fall. He’s kissing Bucky.  
  
Who flips them over with a neat twist of hips, flips them so that Steve’s on top, and arches his hips up so their bodies rock together, hardness meeting hardness, arousal in aching matching lines. “Bucky,” Steve says, and Bucky smiles up at him and grabs Steve’s hand as it sneakily tries to cushion his head against the kitchen floor and laces their fingers together a fraction too tightly but with shining eyes.  
  
Steve kisses him harder, answering the challenge. Bucky’s eyes slip shut for a moment, and Steve trails kisses from his lips to the corner of his mouth to the line of his jaw to the soft spot under it, which makes Bucky shiver and go still for a second, lost in pleasure.  
  
“Bucky,” Steve says a second time, Steve prays, vows, promises. That name on his lips, the taste of that skin. “Bucky.”  
  
Bucky opens his eyes and says, “Steve,” and Steve’s hips jerk involuntarily, because yes, yes, _God_ yes, Bucky yes.  
  
This time the table does come crashing down. Broken plates and juice and breakfast detritus everywhere. Fuck it, Steve thinks, they can always clean up later, there’s a later, he knows there is; and he gets a hand resting on Bucky’s hip just under the elastic of those soft grey morning sweatpants and then leaves it in place because he’s _not_ going to push and also because every piece of his body and heart has stuttered to a kind of billowing luminous halt at the realization of what they’re doing: his hand on Bucky’s body, his fingers spread out over skin and bone, his nerve endings singing with heat and amazement.  
  
Bucky blinks, looks down at his own hip, at the revelation; looks back up. Says, midwinter parties and glittering lights back in full swing in those eyes, joy not uninterrupted but resumed and deeper than before, “You stoppin’ there?”  
  
“Fuck no,” Steve declares, kissing him to seal the oath, kissing him with utter fierceness, kissing him because Bucky’s kissing back and wanting him: it’s a yes that’s shouted from rooftops and danced through sunbeams in rain.  
  
They’re not careful. They don’t hold back. They take everything and give it right back, strength for strength. They’re still wearing sweatpants and briefly shirts—Bucky rips Steve’s off, and Steve returns the favor and they end up laughing shakily at the shreds—and Steve scatters kisses like stars over bare skin and scars.   
  
Unmapped territories, Steve thinks briefly, dizzily, lips wandering over that skin: lines and roads and rivers, shapes and stories. Wild and free. Bucky digs fingers into his hip, and Steve stops, a hint of fear—what if what if what if, what if Bucky doesn’t want—but when he put the question into his glance he gets an eyeroll and a grumble of, “God, you’re a sap, Stevie—”  
  
“I love you,” Steve says, “I love you,” and he knows that Bucky hears him because those eyes get soft and hopeful and illuminated in a way they haven’t been since—since Steve can’t even recall. He’s sure the same expression’s on his own face. Must be: the emotion’s shining out from every inch of him.  
  
“I love you,” Bucky says, “Steve Rogers, I know that, I know this,” and rocks his hips up against Steve’s, and—  
  
And Steve gasps and stutters and comes, just like that, cock pinned between the solid heat of Bucky’s hip and the whisper-friction of his sweatpants; the orgasm hits like a thunderclap of long-awaited bliss and rolls through him head to toe, white-hot as the sun.  
  
He comes back to himself, panting, to find Bucky watching him; Bucky’s not laughing at Steve’s impressive lapse of self-control, and maybe that’s another difference but maybe it’s not because Bucky in every before and every now has always had Steve’s back. Bucky _is_ , however, smiling, cock hard and insistent between their bodies, a line of sweet rigid need that Steve can feel.  
  
“Yeah, well,” Steve says, or rather huffs out between wonderful breaths, “your turn,” and gets a hand between them and into Bucky’s pants and holds him, strokes him, relearns the length and weight of him, up and down and that little twist-and-squeeze at the end that he remembers working so well—  
  
Bucky’s lips part, soundless, as he tenses all over. He’s beautiful and silent when he comes, head thrown back, battle-honed muscles shuddering in ecstasy. The morning sun splashes gold through his hair, across his eyelashes, over his skin: like gilded tears, like raw honey, like sudden rain.  
  
The ruins of the table creak and crumple a bit more behind them. They’re mostly dressed, lying on the floor. Bucky’s mouth tastes like orange juice, like syrup, like home.  
  
Bucky stops nibbling Steve’s lower lip long enough to muse, “Yep, definitely wantin’ that.”  
  
“Me too,” Steve breathes, “me too.”  
  
“Though…I got a question…”  
  
“Anything.” Anything at all. Steve will give an honest answer. Even when, especially when, it hurts.  
  
Bucky grins. “ ’S it always that quick? I mean, not that I’m complaining, Steve, wouldn’t dream of it, but help a guy with no memories out here…”  
  
“Oh,” Steve says, and then, looking at Bucky’s eyes as they crack and start laughing at him at last, full of fondness and relief and weightless infinite delight, “oh, okay, thank you for that, and so you’re saying you really _do_ need the breakfast food and orange juice to get an eyeful, God I fuckin’ love you.”  
  
Bucky wraps flexible legs around Steve’s waist and says, “Let’s try to break the bed next.” Steve starts laughing or maybe crying, and Bucky adds, “I’m sure about this, Steve, still workin’ on the whole thing about new clothes and an entire new damn life, but _this_ part I got figured out,” and kisses him again.


End file.
